Monday, September 29, 2008

Sorry it's been a while since I updated here. Work has been pretty busy (it's now budget season).

Heather and I walked up to Little India for dinner yesterday. Went to Lahore Tikka as usual, it was fast and good. We walked along Queen E from Greenwood and noticed a few changes in the stores. Studio Oui (Heather's favourite clothing store) has a satellite store carrying men's clothing; the Stage East lofts are almost sold out, and have a cool-looking sales office on the north side of Queen; Timmie Dog Outfitters are opening a Queen E location; the used car lot near Wild Thyme's old spot is now up for lease; and the pub at Curzon looks like the renovations are done (and it looks amazing inside), but our guess is they're still waiting for the liquor license.

I've been fixing up my travel blog. Finally got CS3 installed and so I've been going through my old travel pics looking for images that crop nicely for header photos. I created about a dozen. I've been trying to find a free site that will host server-side scripting so that I can randomly rotate through the pics. Unfortunately Google Pages doesn't.

JP is back in town, and he came out after our Ultimate game on Sunday. We won our game 19 - 15, in a fairly competitive game. Went to Jawny Baker's (in the middle of nowhere at O'Connor and StClair). It's a nice restaurant to head to after a game. Most of our Sunday games are at 1pm, and they serve brunch (including a decent eggs benedict) until 3pm, so we'll most likely be there every week. Our games are near Bermondsey and Eglinton (even more in the middle of nowhere). We should do pretty well this season.

Hockey hasn't started out that great. We lost our first game 8-0; and then our next game 5-0. Hopefully they'll re-sort the teams soon. This week's game is late, at 11:15pm, but it's also the night of the VP debate in the US. Most people I know are looking forward to watching the debate, to see if Palin makes a fool of herself again. The clips of her Couric interview on youtube are pretty funny, if it wasn't for the fact that she really is running for VP. The Canadian english debate is also on that night (I guess so TV stations minimize lost ad revenue), but my preference will be the US VP debate. I actually watched Letterman for the first time in years, to see if he would make fun of McCain suspending his campaign for the 3rd night (the first two nights Letterman spent about eight minutes ripping McCain because he skipped out on his show).

We had our 1st wedding anniversary last week. We went out to Tomi Kro's on the Saturday, because most restaurants are closed on Mondays. Heather had the scallop carpaccio appetizer and duck main; I had the foie gras appetizer and beef tenderloin w/ stilton cheese. All the food was great, as usual.

The little black bugs are all over our backyard again. It happens around this time every year. We stopped using the back door, because every time we open it about 40 bugs fly in, which we then have to hand-vac up. If I remember the only way they go away is when the temperature finally drops below zero. It's quite a nuisance, especially when barbecuing. I asked my Ultimate team and other people have the same problem. The bugs are somewhere between aphids and mosquitoes. They don't do anything except fly towards lights and the ceiling, and then die within hours.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Summer came to an unofficial end today, being Labour Day. It feels like we were cheated out of a week of summer because Labour Day was so early this year. (I was also sick for almost two weeks at the start of August which made it go by rather quickly).

I was at Deerfield today with Doaner, Craig and Chris. We all started well on the 1st hole. I had a 6, and there were two 5s and another 6. We didn't do so well after that. I shot a 45 on the front, and then fell apart on the last 5 holes to end up with a 102. Bleh. The only club really working for me was my putter.

I finally finished the deck yesterday!

Oddly enough I tore down the old deck on Victoria Day weekend (the unofficial start of summer) and finished on Labour Day weekend. So the deck can officially be called my "summer project".

The lighting turned out as I had hoped; I took some pics but my camera can't handle the low lighting levels. The front of the deck looks a bit odd right now, because there's no plants yet. There will be two globe cedars on each side of the stairs, tucked under the overhang. The idea is to make it look like the deck is floating. Our new city-issued garbage bin arrived this past week and fits in nicely under the bench with the recycling bin. (Fortunately, as I designed it that way). Our green bin will go around the side of the house, as it contains smelly stuff. (We wash out our recycling before throwing stuff out, and garbage is mostly non-recyclable plastics, which doesn't smell).

I haven't figured out what to do with our old garbage bin -- the city suggests using it to gather leaves. Obviously suggested by some city staffer who lives in the suburbs where they might have room to store an extra garbage bin or two, and who don't have to design decks around garbage bins. The city did pick up the old blue bins, maybe they'll do the same with old garbage bins.

The whole backyard project started because I need to disconnect the downspout. I can now landscape a bit of the yard (so that water flows away from the house). I'd like to complete that before winter.

We lost in our hockey playoff game on Thursday so we're done for the season. All my summer sports are now done, and fall seasons don't start up for a couple weeks. I may have to go for a run to keep myself active over the two weeks.